Nature in its glory: my Top Ten spots

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Gloucestershire boy Christopher Somerville recalls his youth as a scallywag in the Big Meadow and selects his favourite southwest wildlife spots today

I see they have rechristened my childhood playground, and I must admit it does make me smile. Learning that my old familiar Big Meadow and my beloved Old Canal are masquerading under the official-sounding title of Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s Coombe Hill Meadows Nature Reserve is like hearing of a plain-mannered friend who has suddenly taken a preposterous title.

But something had to be done about the vast old grazing field and its bordering strip of weedy waterway, so extraordinarily rich in plants and birds and animals when I used to play there in the 1950s, so impoverished and diminished by